Interview Heath Bunting-

Mathew Kabatoff - pirate radio has been consistently mentioned in
articles about you over the past four years, but the type of
pirate radio was never specified. Were you involved in pirate
radio that just was over the radio, what was its context or
content?

Heath Bunting - I guess my first contact with pirate radio was
listening to 'Radio Caroline', which was a commerical pirate in
the 70s in the uk, its a quite well known one, it was on a ship
in the sea, and if you look on the net you can find loads of fan
sites. It wasn't unitl my twenties that I started doing things
myself, I was building small 1watt transmitters, just for the fun
of it, we eventually managed to get a 20watt built for us and we
set up a station in bristol.

mk-Was it music or...

hb- It was a mixture, it was music, techno, and Captial
Beefheart, and all those  kind of weird things that you wouldn't
normally hear on the radio at that time. There was also
performative pieces and very abstract annoying experimental
noises. I would do those mostly.

mk- Was there a community at the time of people doing pirate
radio?

hb- Yeah there was the standard pirates that worked at community
music stations, there was one called 'SPEC' which stood for 'sim
pause and eastern community radio' that played mostly things like
regga and ragga. There were also a number of the anarchist
stations like one called 'SYT' which I was involved with for a
bit over the years. I used to help them out but I couldn't get
along with all the krusty anarchistsÉthem and all their thrash
and gabber. Then there was us and we were  the arty farty bunch.

mk- How many people were involved in your group?

hb- I'd say six, six people you could say were more core
participants that would make stuff everyweek, and be invloved in
rigging and finding places to transmit from.

mk- So you were actually mobile, you didn't have it in your
basement...?

hb- No we used a different location every weekend, it was a
weekend station and just for politiness to the authorities we
would move around. It was a game really. they could have caught
us within fifteen minutes if they really wanted to. If we moved
around it was like "okay we're playing the game".

mk- What was the response, were you able to see the effects of
the broadcast? It is a difficult question to ask, who is
listening and how you are affecting them.

hb- Well you can never can tell, unless you are doing phone ins
or something like that, you don't ever get feed back. Or the
effects are quite long in their return. For instance you could be
at a party talking to someone and they could ask you what you do,
and you say oh 'I do graffiti or I do radio' and they say 'oh
I've seen that'. Then other people who know you and would listen
no matter what's on, they know its a local thing and are into it,
whatever form it is in. The thing that always motivated me was
the thought of people just tuning randomly through the dial
coming across something very strange. But the main thing that was
happening with our activity was that it glued people together and
inspired them. People who normally wouldn't do audio stuff or had
done it before were fired up that their work was being broadcast
every weekend.

mk- How did you get to Banff and how did Radio 90 came to be as
an entity, what were some of the debates? I talked to Susan
Kenard and she mentioned that you had had debates about how the
station would funtion, what communities would it serve, how
internet tools affect the largest amount of people possible.

hb- I was originally invited to the Banff Centre to speak at a
conference called 'Big Game Hunters', after which I was invited
to attend an artist's residency called 'Apocalypso'. During that
time I was given a studio and a computer with full internet
access, something which I had never had before. I have had
various studios without computers or, an internet connection, or
I would manage to get into a lab for a week but,  I had never had
it given all to myself. While I was there I started listening to
net radio from london such as interface,  I was missing home, and
thought...well this is a very priviledged position why don't i
try to share itÉthe most obvious way to do that was to put a
transmitter on the back of the computer.  I managed to aquire a
transmitter and for the ten weeks and had thisÉwell, it was
hardly a station but a broadcast. After 'Apocalypso' I was
offered a techincal job as a 'Work Study' which allowed me to
stay on at the Centre, and provided time to formalize the
project. I turned the broadcast into a radio station. I built a
studio and tried to get other people invovled, the first person
was Susan, who was scepticle of it even though she had community
experience. I basically ran it for a while and then Susan go
invloved. We would put different streams on, Susan and I would
both had our own separate projects and shows, but after a while
we decided to automate the whole thing and provide a focal point
for the station as well. At that time we conceived the schedular
which has been running for several years continously.

mk- Can you talk about the schedular, how was it built? How does
it operate?

hb- There were two motivations behind the schedular, the first
was we needed something automated to run the station, and second,
it was a bit of a move on my part, as criticism. A number of
groups had been talking about writing schedulars for quite some
time, some even were heavily funded yet hadn't produced anything.
I said publically that if no one would make one in the next two
months I would write one to embarrass everybody. At that time I
wasn't a programmer and obviously I hadn't recieved any money. So
after two months, and the fact that we needed some form of
automation, I wrote one, it took five hours.  That was my first
serious bit of Perl programming. It was Susan Kenard's and my
idea.  Once we got the schedular people inserted their one hour
shows into the scheduled time slots. It had the dual purpose of
running the local station, the banff business, and also being a
focal point for experimental net.radio. Which isn't so much the
case now. That seems that things have of died away it seems more
of just running the station and the content reflects that a bit
more. Its taken on somewhat of a role as the small conventional
radio for listeners for the town of Banff.

mk- Tying back into how the radio station has changed, is it the
case with these practices which are experimental and so much work
that the producers or artists burn out? Or is it a cyclical
effect where people work hard for a while, tire and then either
regroup or move on?

hb- I don't think this is the case for Radio 90, but either way
things have to keep evolving. Not only do you have to bring new
people in but you also have to create new functions for the
station that is based on a degree of stability. At the end of the
day there are people who actually really enjoy listening, thats
the main motive or one of the main motives, if you can have one
for the station. It is there for the listeners. It's also a
source of entertainment for ourselves. It's very nice to listen
to your own station and not know what is going to play. And it
also keeps the intricies of administration and policy is quite
entertaining.

mk- Some of what I have heard in relation to the space that
radio90 occupies an the administrative structure that is the
banff centre is humours to say the least.

hb- Yeah but now we are looking for a radio artist in residence
which very much has to do with the administration and legacy of
the Banff Centre. We had Jason Sweeny and he is coming back
specifically to do a residency at Radio90, and he has had to
apply to the Banff Centre even though we are not part of the
Centre technically. We did a call recently to encourage people to
apply for the residency and stay, because there is accomidation.
Its a really good resource because there are not that many radio
stations with good listenership that offer  full control to
newcomers. We basically open the door if you want to do a show
for a day or a month. There are lots of art residencies but they
don't offer a fully opertational radio station with a regular
audience. I think that thats quite valuable to share.

mk- What is the effect of pirate radio as it has moved from the
floating radio transmitter onto the internet?

hb- There obviously are various motivations, some very different
from each other, some very different why someone would broadcast
illegally. Some of the people are just trying to make money, as
quick as possible, and some of the stations are them mostly just
advertising for clubs, they are owned and run by club types who
are into all sorts of shady things. Then there are other pirates
where it is just passion for music, like interface pirate radio
which came out of Faith FM. They just wanted to play music that
was not played on any other station and were prepared to break
the law to do that. For them, if they can have more listeners and
be more effective by moving onto the net, it doesn't really
matter if it is illegal or not.  They might be saving some costs,
by not getting raided, but really the illegal side is just an
inconvience. If you look at the anarchist stations there is a
whole form of the power in the fact that they are disobeying the
authorities, so moving onto the net for an anarchist station is a
bit silly really, because you are leaving your own community and
territory and basically being forced to be a refugee. An interant
refugee on the net so to speak. But if you can somehow combine
the global reach of the internet with your  locality you get the
best of both worlds. Radio90 is a bit of an attempt to do that,
if the studio is used a bit more by the local community to play
sets and there were streams set up to go out locally, you would
be able to cover all your bases in terms of theory and politics
and just good practice in terms of music.

mk- Do you see net.radio being a good tool for mass dissemination
of information, or is it just like anyother communication tool?

hb- Yeah well, it depends on what kind of message you are talking
about. On the levels of form or content you know the mere fact
that a  station exists in a different constitution to a normal
commerical one is quite a strong message. Hopefully Radio90 is an
inspiration to either its local community or porta net community,
it's respective of the type of music played on there really. But
it's kind of a strange question: is the internet net.radio an
effective way to communicate, in that it could beÉit depends on
what you are trying to say and who to. Radio in itself has no
power it is the social structure that is around it that
determines who, how and what media has the power. Radio90, in
itself is quite an important message to communicate because it in
itself is saying that you can do this, you can do it without
money and that you can do it democratically.  This kind of
message for some people is as important as the music that is
played on the station.

mk- On irational.org there are diagrams and instructions showing
how to set up a streaming radio and pirate radio over the net.
Obviously the reasons are to disseminate and open up this
information, but can you talk about it.

hb-That part of the site is actually maintained by another member
of irational named Sic, so he can probably talk to you a bit
better about that, but he is an anarchist and a radio engineer.
His main motivation and the position he takes is that most of the
information on the internet about radio components is wrong, and
also a waste of time if you build from those diagrams and
instructions. He either recommends that you buy a professional
kit that is already made or you follow his diagrams, if you
really want to. Sic supplies you with the circuits and he was a
military trained engineer, so the stuff you get is very good
quality. There is not much listed on the site but the stuff that
there is very good. I think it is the best or one of the best
pirate radio technical sites on the net. He gets more visits on
that portion of irational than anyother irational projectÉeven
more than our fake porn sites or whateverÉso he's doing pretty
well.

mk- In regards to the phsycial space that is Radio90, what if the
Banff Centre comes down and says get out. What does Radio90 do?

hb- Well they have said that quite often and we are saying, no
you can't have the space and they know that.

mk- Oh okay, but first can you talk about how you got the space?

hb- The space was offered to me because I was an employee of the
Centre and I said I'd like it for my studio. I immediately took
everything out and built all the benches and made an accomidation
upstairs, and they weren't quite respectful of that. After I left
there was some threat to the space, they wanted to take it back
so we negotiated some sort of arrangement. Hopefully the Banff
Centre realizes that project is internationally recgnized and if
they tried to do anything to it there would be some kind of
support for Radio90. We know that we would be prepared to defend
that space, but it would never come to that. There has been a bit
of fuss about locks and some about refused entry for non Radio90
affiliates, it seems that about every six months someone says
Radio90 can live somewhere elseÉ you can live in the corridors we
want that space. It is quite fortunate however that the space is
quite architecturally different from other rooms in Glyde hall,
and it has a long history of alternative practices..

mk- That specific room?

hb- Yeah the one upstairs has been used for like all sorts of
things like weird performances, parties, orgies, and has had
people living in there.  It's because it's one of the only rooms
that isn't constructed in an institutional space. In the Banff
Centre architecturally, there is no public and no private space;
where as that room and the room downstairs are free from that
coding and have been since its construction. It does then have
this alternative history and I think people respect that.

mk- Do you think that internet 2 and better connections to
wireless appliances such as cell phones complexify the situation
of pirate radio?

hb- I think the thing with WAP technology could have a some
significant impact, but I'm not in the business of predicting the
future. The issue really with all of this is how many ears are
available and how many wallets are attached to those ears. It's
not about how many frequency slots there are or how many mobile
phones are in circulation, its how many listeners there are and
how many adverts you can deliver to them. That's also a certain
amount true with FM and thats why those people break those laws.
Trouble occurs when company's get upset with the fact that they
are paying 10,000 dollars a month for a liscence and half of
their listeners are going to the local pirate, so they insist the
police go and shut them down. The same thing will happen on the
net but probably in a different manner, companies have to insure
that there are so many listeners for their investment, there will
be legislation so that if people don't pay the price they will be
shut down. That will probably be the same for WAP technology as
well, but the response from the authorities might not be brute
force police action, it might be through just making the
competition invisible. For instance on the internet, if you don't
pay to be on a search engine now your site doesn't show up,
your're not actually physically shut down, but you just have been
rendered invisible.

mk- Do you think that radio, and radio mixed with the internet
still value their historical utopian roots? What about net.art?
it too was rather utopian.

hb- I'm not so optimistic that things won't be shut down, besides
you have to move on to a new areas. For instance I think the
internet is fairly shut down now and the time for spontinaity is
fairly over in certain areas,  I was saying we should move onto
biotechnology  especially because the stakes are higher. But
actually the nice thing about Radio90 is that it has been running
three years continuously without any legal problems, its nice to
have something of longevity and consistencyÉso that kind of goes
against my usual practice of being quick and dirty and light and
fast and shutting things down, or having them shut down by other
people. I guess there is a possibility for a bit of both,
pragmatism, longevity, and enthusiasm and utopianism. They both
need to be there and inform each other.

mk- In order to think of biotech and pull the metaphor and
practice of mobility from radio, is it necessary for you to
position yourself as being rooted in a fixed location with fixed
resources to be critical of a feild where the stakes are much
higher? Does this practice have to be quick or dirty or
consolidated and centred in order to have an effect?

hb- Yeah I think there is a great period now of regrouping,  I'm
not really sure if it is fortunate or unfortunate but, the whole
scene is falling apart you know. I think its to do with the
millenium, I think everyone was working towards this big moment
when everything would be great and, because certainly my
generation was brought up to thing the year 2000 would be glossy
and shiney and exciting and infact it wasn't. I think many of
those hopes were manifest in the net art scene or the net
community scene. But that has all fallen apart and there is a
general lack of enthusiasm and sometimes even depression around
in the underground let's say. Also all of the practices and
methods that we have used or taught ourselves or where taught,
have been turned on their heads by the fact that we are living in
a different time and a different architecture of time. The thing
with biotech is that it is incredibly urgent, and as I said the
stakes are very very high. You can check you email every three
days, but you have to eat three times a day, and you have to pay
significantly more than checking your email. The effects of
bioegineered food are also irreversible, you can turn the
internet off but you cannot ever remove the effects of
biotechnology from the environment. I think people have to get to
understand that or there must be new people who become skilled to
oppose those things. To anwser your question, do things have to
be quick and dirty or remain centred? I think it is a
combination. For instance I built Superweed at the Banff Centre
which is a fairly settled environment, but at the I was moving
around at the time, going from one resource to another using a
kind of a parasite model. Hopefully that could be used as an
effective method for more biotech ventures which do require a
certain level of expertise and enginuity. But you know today I
just bought a book on foods that you can eat that grow wild in
the English environment and that's kind of an act of training and
also its highly politicized to go out and obtain food that is not
even organic, its more, its higher quality and higher value than
organic food. Then I am going to find that and eat that on a
regular basis so I see it as an act of education. So which is a
preparation I 'd say.

mk- Is there room for different tactics and stragies to oppose or
thwart things like biotech? What are the steps taken in the
process?

hb- I certainly think that there is plenty of room for different
types of tactics from all kinds of people, I tend to operate on
an individualistic or small collective process. There definitely
is room for mass action but the first things that will happen is,
your dedicated fanatics who are totally opposed to biotechnology
on political or environmental  grounds, will agitate continuously
and attempt to educate the greater public. Then there will be
scares about the effects of biotech which will hit the main
media, the majority of people hear about it in those ways, the
fact that some people start to get sick from GM. And that things
are going beyond their control and people get scared about these
huge multi-nationals. So yeah I think there will be waves, but
there will be your dedicated hardcore crews working away at it
all the time and they will have their own networks of
communication and build their own infrastructure really. They
will make interventions into mainstream media when necessary.

mk- I am curious about music, possibly politically subversive, 
do mass communication technologies affect how musical languages
are being used or viewed? Does mainstream incorporation have a
negative impact on these practices?

hb- Well music in the UK has been the dominant form of rebellion,
certainly in the early 90s and the 80s which I don't think were
shared in other countries. Germany a bit with the techno scene,
like in Berlin. Things as they say become mainstream but, the act
or the process is not static, it's a process of insurection and
of course that becomes quantified, and the practioners either go
underground or they move onto something else. I don't see it as a
problem but somethings do have a true timeless quality and they
do get spoiled. People seem to come up with new things, and there
are these lulls. You have these big bursts like with Rave culture
and then it dies away and there is nothing interesting for years
maybe there are little blips. I think the problem with that is
that there is a cyclical nature and there are ups and downs and
the downs can be very depressing or boring. I guess thats how it
has to be.

mk- Can you talk about the notion of play. You know play music
and just having fun, possibly being radical and subversive at the
same time and you know just messing around, you know how it has
been refered as pranksterism but at the same time it seems not
only to be strategy but a life style.

hb-  I think the first thing to say about play is that its also a
spiritual thing, its a life thing, and it is also a training
thing. For instance whenever I have a ticket on the train or the
subway, I will not use it, I will pretend I don't have a ticket,
and when I don't have a ticket I will pretend that I do. For the
act of play you are conditioning yourself, you are becoming fit
in your mind and your techniques and your body. There is also the
act of pretending and simulation, like I said pretending to not
be what you are is a kind of an iconclistic act. You are
revealing and deconstructing structures around you. I think that
you can see with children that, that is what they are doing when
they play. Play I think is such a part of personal social
development and also there is a political side to it. Because it
is actaully a powerful thing for your own personal development as
I said, and group development. There are all these mechanisms to
try to turn play or harness play into non dangerous activities.
Things that can be controlled things that can be made profits
from. So just to go out in the street and play in a non
recognizable manner can be a very subversive act, so very
liberating. I have experimented with that quite alot. And even
when I am in banff, or something like that, I am in a mounting
enviroment and I should be wearing the right clothes and doing
the right activities, I try to resist that, I'd rather go out and
climb trees or throwing stones becuase you don't or not told
especially to climb trees, and also doing things instantaneously
with completely the wrong equipment is quite interesting.

mk- Like what?

hb- Well like if you were wearing a suit and decide suddenly to
run down the street. People find that very distrubing, whereas if
you were wearing jogging shoes its absolutely fine. Also if you
are smartly dressed and climb a tree or if you are at an age when
you shouldn't be climbing trees people find that quite
interesting. Standing still as sport, if you think of that as
play it is actually illegal to stand still in many countries. And
maybe standing still in sports clothes or other clothes can
change the meaning of that non-activity. Right now I am taking up
skateboarding again as I said I'm quite interested in that. I
used to be quite rebelious with skateboarding, but I am
interested more in the formal aspects of it. Originally it was to
be a training ground for surfing but actually I have gotten
hooked on skateboarding. Specifically ramp work which I had never
really done when I was skateboarding ten years ago or so.  I'd
like to get good at that before I get to old so.

mk- How good do you want to get? just curious?

hb- Maybe to do a bit of rock and roll, to do those edgy tricks
and maybe to get some AIR.  Nothing that is going to be too bone
crunching, just some basic stuff that you can do elegantly, that
you can do backwards and forwards, frontside and backside. For
meditative resons I guess.

mk- Any future projects invloving pirate radio or Radio90 coming
up?

hb- I have a very delayed project which is the opposite to of
Radio90, it is a reception station that would be in london. It
would be a net controlled scanner so you can basically scan and
pick up pirate broadcasts from london and listen to them across
the internet. We have all of the equipment and programs
necessary, we are just looking for a location. I'm probably going
to be teaming up with Kate Rich, who is my wife now, from Bureau
of Inverse Technology and see if we can get some extra muscle
into it, to get it opertational. That's been delayed for a year
but that would be a good compliment to Radio90. The project would
pick up stations from London and broadcast them to Banff. So you
would be getting you latest pirate style sounds, in Banff, from
London, liveÉ But as I said, I think all the methods and modes of
operation for the past ten years and specifically the internet
methods are fairly...not all totally redundant but they have been
turned on their heads. The ones that were seen as primarily
important, I think they are totally insignificant. So i am just
playing really and seeing what comes out of that play really,
especially with food and kind of site and physical activities
like skateboarding. I think all these things will come together
soonish, in the next couple of years into an invigorated vibrant
anti-GM scene. I'm not sure everyone from the net scene  will
migrate I think a few people made the cross over.

mk-And is Biotech Hobbist going to happen again?

hb- Actually Natalie Jerimenjenko who I was collaborating with,
and who is the other member of the Bureau of Inverse Technology
is getting a bit more fired up and will be writing a regular
column for Mute magazine. I think her babies are growing up now
and she is a bit more free to get on with stuff. Fortuantely I
think biotech hobbiest is still relevant, even though we have
been off it for some time, and adding a bit more content could
make quite a good project still. So I am looking forward to that.

mk- What about gaining access to resoureces? how much resources
do you need? I am thinking about setting up servers for the
receiver project and gaining access to the space. is that a
problem or is it something to work on.

hb- Well somethings for me are incredilby easy because of the way
I live, and other things are totally impossible. You know I tend
to live in a different way to the usual settled person so
somethings I can do almost magically, and other thigns that
people do normally I just can't do, and thats very hard to
discover. So there is no general, no you can't generalize about
whats required and whats not. For instance Irational has a server
and we are starting to host other organizations, the Cube in
Bristol, and probably the Bureau of Inverse technology. That easy
for us to do, I don't need a physical location for that. But to
get this scanner sited and consisted as an individual project is
very difficult. Radio90 really runs because there is four people
working to keep it up, so if I tried to do it by myself or with
someone who travels alot it would be impossible. So yeah
resrouces are sometimes easy to come by and sometimes incredibly
difficult. I was picking wild berries the other day...and they
were very easy to find and totally delicious...and then again
checking email in that environment is very impossible.